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Let us consider once more how it is possible for an identity
to extend over a universe. This comes to the question how each
variously placed entity in the multiplicity of the sense order
can have its share in one identical Principle.
The solution is in the reasons given for refusing to distribute
that principle; we are not to parcel it out among the entities of
the multiple; on the contrary, we bring the distributed multiples
to the unity. The unity has not gone forth to them: from their
dispersion we are led to think of it as broken up to meet them,
but this is to distribute the controller and container equally
over the material handled.
A hand may very well control an entire mass, a long plank, or
anything of that sort; the control is effective throughout and
yet is not distributed, unit for unit, over the object of
control: the power is felt to reach over the whole area, though
the hand is only hand-long, not taking the extension of the mass
it wields; lengthen the object and, provided that the total is
within the strength, the power handles the new load with no need
of distributing itself over the increased area. Now let us
eliminate the corporeal mass of the hand, retaining the power it
exerted: is not that power, the impartible, present integrally
over the entire area of control?
Or imagine a small luminous mass serving as centre to a
transparent sphere, so that the light from within shows upon the
entire outer surface, otherwise unlit: we surely agree that the
inner core of light, intact and immobile, reaches over the entire
outer extension; the single light of that small centre
illuminates the whole field. The diffused light is not due to any
bodily magnitude of that central point which illuminates not as
body but as body lit, that is by another kind of power than
corporeal quality: let us then abstract the corporeal mass,
retaining the light as power: we can no longer speak of the light
in any particular spot; it is equally diffused within and
throughout the entire sphere. We can no longer even name the spot
it occupied so as to say whence it came or how it is present; we
can but seek and wonder as the search shows us the light
simultaneously present at each and every point in the sphere. So
with the sunlight: looking to the corporeal mass you are able to
name the source of the light shining through all the air, but
what you see is one identical light in integral omnipresence.
Consider too the refraction of light by which it is thrown away
from the line of incidence; yet, direct or refracted, it is one
and the same light. And supposing, as before, that the sun were
simply an unembodied illuminant, the light would no longer be
fixed to any one definite spot: having no starting point, no
centre of origin, it would be an integral unity omnipresent.
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